If anyone has visited Ellisland Farm, where Burns lived and farmed for three years or so, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, then combine it with a day or two’s fishing on the Nith and don’t miss two items: a replica mount of Roddy Dickson’s breathtaking 18 lb sea-trout caught five years ago from Ellisland pool (about 100 yds from the farm) and Robbie’s fishing rod.

One of my biggest ambitions in salmon fishing is to catch a salmon from Ellisland pool. I had a few casts there one late August about 3 years ago while on a T&S job and on a day when 4 or so fresh salmon had been taken on worm in high and coloured water, I had a snatching take to a big Cascade treble in the pool. Perhaps a take from a running fish that in the end was more interested in running than in, well, taking. (Or to borrow from a sequence in one of Paul Young’s Hooked on Fishing programmes, “the hook hold (pause) … well … didn’t hold …” [nicely delivered by Paul with one of his trademark half-shrugs].)

Last time I heard, Roddy himself has the fishing rights as part of a small syndicate on the right bank of the river at the pool, but you can fish the left bank via Dougie Smith and Dalswinton estate (they’re on Fishpal).